Report on 'Quiet Crisis' for Young Children Stirs Loud Response

A Carnegie Corporation of New York report sounding the alarm about a
"quiet crisis'' facing the nation's youngest children evoked a loud and
emotional outpouring of support from top government, business, health,
and education officials at a meeting here last week.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first speaker, conceded that it will
take uncommon "political will and institutional fortitude'' to fill the
report's mandate. But there is reason for optimism, she said, simply
because of the players involved.

"This room is filled with people who are willing to work to make it
happen,'' Mrs. Clinton said.

The 30-member task force of leading health, education, and
child-care experts that prepared the report chronicled the declining
status of large numbers of young children and highlighted research on
the importance of the time from birth to age 3. It also showcased
successful models for spurring healthy development and offered a broad
set of recommendations on health, education, and child care to reverse
a pattern of social neglect of young children. (See Education Week,
April 13, 1994.)

While other reports attempting to rally support for children have
met with limited success, panelists said they were hopeful that the
widely publicized Carnegie meeting would invigorate the movement to
bolster support for children and families.

Besides Mrs. Clinton, the conference featured four Cabinet
secretaries, former and current governors and mayors, one member of
Congress, business leaders, and medical and child-care experts.

Dr. Jonas Salk said the report could offer the same kind of
"relief'' felt by Americans about 40 years ago when the polio vaccine
that bears his name was licensed. The strategies the report lays out,
he said, signal "that it will be possible to prevent not only the
crippling of bodies but also of minds of children early in their
lives.''

"But we have also learned,'' he added, "that where there is a way
there is not always the will.''

'False Debate'

Mrs. Clinton said the children's movement has been thwarted by a
"false debate'' between one camp that believes families should be held
solely accountable for children's outcomes and another that says
society must assume responsibility for downtrodden families.

The Carnegie report, she said, rightly targets interrelationships
between the family and society and urges parents, communities, and the
private and public sectors to join in crafting solutions.

Mrs. Clinton highlighted steps the Administration has taken to ease
family burdens, such as expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. In a
pitch for the health-care-reform plan she helped draft, she also argued
that the Carnegie panel's goals cannot be met without universal health
coverage.

Attorney General Janet Reno, Secretary of Education Richard W.
Riley, Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala, and
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry G. Cisneros each
talked about the steps their agencies are taking.

Their proposals on crime, health, welfare, Head Start, school
readiness, homelessness, and housing constitute "the most coherent
urban and family strategy in 25 years,'' Mr. Cisneros said.

Some participants chastised Ms. Shalala for appearing to dodge
questions on how to boost the caliber of child care and of day-care
training to meet the increasing demand for affordable, high-quality
infant and toddler care.

Ellen Galinsky, a co-president of the Families and Work Institute
and co-author of a new study highlighting the poor quality of many
family day-care homes, noted that good early care is pivotal to welfare
reform. (See story, this page.)

Hope, Opportunities

Others urged more family-friendly workplaces and called for a
continuum of family services.

Besides urging better health-care and family-planning services,
Kenneth J. Ryan, the chairman of the department of obstetrics and
gynecology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said that the
Centers for Disease Control should track teenage pregnancy and that
states and communities should set goals to reduce it.

Herant Katchadourian, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral
scences at Stanford University, described a middle-grades life-sciences
curriculum he has piloted that blends scientific and practical
information on parenting.

But Gloria Rodriguez, the president and chief executive officer of
Avance, a Texas-based network of family-support programs, suggested
that such steps will not work without "relationships, opportunities,
purpose, and hope'' in children's lives.

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